The Five Thirty Eight numbers guy takes the time to use numbers to show that the Empire State and its largest city has had a drop in their numbers probably for almost two weeks due several factors, the strongest being social distancing…
New York had provided about half the nations virus numbers up until now …
So this IS good news…
Very good news for New York’s Gov Cuomo and New York City’s Mayor deBlasio and New Yorkers themselves…
Silver points that the emerging downturn in cases is NOT steep right now, But progressing…
This is the problem that Gov Como faces in how he would try to ease virus restrictions in the state in order to try to boost the state’s economy without getting a spike upward in new virus cases….
There is increasing evidence that New York City and New York state are turning a corner in their efforts to fight back COVID-19, and the timing suggests that the shifts may be a result of social distancing measures.
Whether the state and city have merely flattened the curve to a plateau or actually begin to turn it around is somewhat ambiguous. In his daily press conferences, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has described recent data on hospitalizations as good news and emphasized that the curve has become quite flat. On Tuesday, for the first time, New York reported a net decline in hospitalizations, although it remains to be seen whether the trend can be sustained.. The number of people reported as dying from COVID-19 has also been at a plateau in recent days.
But data on the share of New Yorkers who are testing positive for COVID-19 suggests that the curve has not merely flattened but probably begun to turn down. Among tests conducted Monday, April 13 (and reported on Tuesday afternoon), 34.5 percent were positive, down from a peak of 50.4 percent on Tuesday, March 31. The decline in the share of positive tests has been fairly robust across most parts of New York state, including in all five New York City’s five boroughs, although some more clearly so than others.
Still, if the decline has been steady, it has so far been slow. That may imply that while current social distancing measures are enough to gradually decrease the number of new cases in New York, the number of new cases may continue to simmer at relatively high levels for several weeks or longer — and that they could increase again if these measures are relaxed…
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In Italy, the decline in the rate of positive tests was initially fairly modest, producing a plateau for a week or two, before later picking up steam.
Warmer weather could also help, although the evidence for this is mixed. There is also a lot of uncertainty about how many people in New York ultimately have or had the coronavirus. If many people had it — as implied by the New England Journal of Medicine letter — then herd immunity could potentially play some role in lowering R, though likely not enough to reduce it below 1 on its own until a large share of the population has become immune.
It’s perhaps more likely, though, that New York has been beating COVID-19 by a relatively thin margin so far, and therefore it doesn’t have a lot of margin for error. That’s a lot better than the alternative case where the city and state were losing the fight and the number of hospitalized patients continued to rise at their earlier rates. But it also means that city, state and regional leaders will have to be smart about reopening the economy and relaxing social distancing measures….